


still caught in the branches of these fingers;

by chartreuser



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-19
Updated: 2015-10-19
Packaged: 2018-04-27 04:54:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5034517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chartreuser/pseuds/chartreuser
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I’m out of breath;<br/>I’m misremembering all the answers I’m<br/>determined not to volunteer.<br/>-Alexandria Huxley, <i>What I Owe.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	still caught in the branches of these fingers;

**Author's Note:**

  * For [steviebucks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/steviebucks/gifts).



> This fic would attempt to explore some... sadder(?) parts of Illya's psyche, which is just meta I constructed myself purely from the table-flipping scene (you know the one) alone. I'm sorry if this only seemed convoluted; I tried.  
> And I didn't proofread this. I have no excuse. I didn't even skim through any of it, just posted it because I (have bad self esteem with writing) really need a beta and someone pls get horrified enough by my writing to be my beta

At the start, there was the first mission, the Vinciguerra one—the one which they don’t talk about anymore. Been a few months, maybe half a year, and they’ve fit into a mold now, clinging on to each other. Solo and Kuryakin; Illya and Napoleon; Cowboy and Peril. And Illya doesn’t exactly know if this was what Russia had sent him for, this sort of leisurely, half-ready promise of being someone else with another person, pretending. Because isn’t that what spies are? Sliding into another name, trying to deceive, trying to slip into spaces, trying to slide out after. Illya knows what all of this entails, this stupid fucking career, that he’s been doing all that’s asked of him and swallowing all the regret that may (would) come, later.

But now there’s only resentment burning up inside, devastating. He’s so tired and he wants to go home but the handlers at U.N.C.L.E. won’t let him. They’re thinking about letting him breathe, but Illya wants to shout at them that this isn’t how you go about it, you don’t turn a man’s life into a constant battlefield disguised as _information_ and stop calling it a war. Because it _is_ a war, constant and hungry—and Illya’s starving for a reprieve.

They tell him he can ask for one, but they don’t actually grant him that. Is only content to let him wander around like a half-formed ghost to call him back saying, _what do you think about this country? What do you think about the beach? What do you think about being someone else, again, one more time?_

If only, he thinks, if only if he can get through this, and he thinks this _every_ time.

And every time, Solo will surface out of nowhere to say, “Peril, I’ll do the infiltration,” and he’ll smirk and quip something like _what, am I not good enough for you_ , and Solo would grin at him, his eyes flashing. What Illya _doesn’t_ do is thank him, and he’ll tell himself that it’s because he’s already insufferable enough as it is, this absolute mess of a man, but it’s something more along the lines of _I don’t know how to_.

Afterwards, they’ll be running and firing blankly into the spaces behind them, ready to harm, darting into corridors and out of them, frantic with the possibility of getting caught. It happens; the both of them gets strung up and beaten and then they don’t talk about it, comes with the job. They’ll meet up with Gaby, who’ll be driving her chic little car, the things Illya doesn’t have time to learn about, and she’ll turn to face them and grin, offer a ‘good job’ if they’re not busy avoiding getting killed.

So it goes. They shake hands with death and try to bargain, because it’s all they know how to do.

One afternoon his partner, dear old Solo, says, “you’re tired of this work,” and Illya doesn’t think about responding, just decides to stare at the chessboard because _fuck_ if he isn’t tired, if he isn’t sick of his former handlers waving potential humiliation over his head through the phone like he’s some sort of damned donkey.

“Perhaps,” Illya will bite out, and Napoleon will look at him, properly, not with his regular side glances, or the amusement in his eyes, or the unfocused gaze but gentle and soft and irritatingly affectionate.

And it’s routine now; Solo would nod, trying to shrug it off, and say “why don’t you head in for the night,” and Illya will do that, but sleep won’t shake away the headaches, won’t brush off the nightmares, and the both of them must be fully aware.

\--

For all the months he’s been with Solo, the one thing he’s noticing is recurring more frequently is that Napoleon’s doing his best to shrink away from touch. It’s nothing outstanding—but he’s flirting less with women, needs a larger personal space. Illya teases him about losing his charm, and Napoleon always bickers back, _you’re the one without the attention,_ or _I have enough charm for the two of us combined, thank you very much_ , but never addresses the underlying message out loud.

He gets the message. Illya doesn’t bring this up.

They lie awake in hotel rooms fully paid by U.N.C.L.E., stretched across their respective beds, trying to keep their mouths shut about how the both of them can’t sleep. Solo dreams of electrocution and people cutting him up, his insides spilling out (he knows this because he’d heard him once, calling out for his name, his first name, the one that he doesn’t use, and begged to be ended sooner and Illya had woken him, his watch pressed into Napoleon’s palms saying, _you’re fine, napoleon, someday this will be over_ ), and Illya sees his father being taken away to the gulags when he shuts his eyes.

Or his mother’s face, tearful, trying to earn a living because she still had _him_ to feed, and he wonders if she’ll be disappointed now, that she had sold her body for her son to give up his. It’s not in the same way, but he thinks it’s close enough.

 _Life takes its toll on your body, on your mind,_ she’d said once, and Illya wants to say that _yes, yes, I know that now_ —but her body is underground now, hidden. He wants to know if his father is still alive, so that conceptually, he’d have _someone_ to say those words to, and they’d understand. All that pain and the resolve tearing him up underneath because he’s afraid.

The thing is that he’s not so intimidated by pain. More by what they’d promise would come after failure, because it’s not something easy to bear, not when you’re hanging on a thread like him.

He thinks, _if only I can get through another mission,_ and ignores the aches in his bones when winter settles over him, the inadequacy of its coldness to what he’s long grown used to. _If only._

\--

Sometimes, he thinks that there’s something to be said about how much they’re in tune to one another, him and his stupid partner. Illya doesn’t want to think about it too much, is hesitant to analyse anything he might be feeling. It goes with everything else these days, his loss of interest in Gaby, his increasing impatience, the lack of worry at the realisation that the KGB doesn’t really want him back, not anymore.

But anger is okay. Anger, he can deal.

\--

They’re going into Germany to do something about the remaining evil Nazis running around when Napoleon asks, lazily, “you doing okay?”

They’re at the gala one of the suspects were holding, suits brushed and neat (and no doubt ready to be tossed later on in the evening), and all Illya can think about is the ridiculous luxuries everyone strives towards, these days, how he had his stomach always-filled when he was a child and still thinking that it wasn’t enough, and how much indignation he has rising to the top of his throat now, ready to spill, when he responds with a shrug.

“I’m fine.”

 _Weakness,_ Illya’s thinking, because he’s not stupid, he knows he’s not okay. Except he lets the ire sit on his tongue: _My family is dead and I think I’ll be with them soon, and I’ll be okay with that, I really am; there are boundaries to what I can and cannot do but I don’t think any of my handlers remember that. How many times until I’m crippled from the torture?_

Napoleon’s inhaling, deeply, and this time Illya’s catching himself because since when did he start calling him _Napoleon_ —before he says, “I honestly think you should go for a vacation. You’re running yourself ragged, here, Peril,” and presses a hand to his shoulder, tentative.

Illya allows it.

“They won’t let me,” he confesses, and turns to look at Napoleon’s face, shuttering close.

Napoleon nods, and Illya watches him contort his expression into something more like the person he’s playing today, and he does the same. _Work,_ he inwardly thinks, _this is no time to be sloppy, aren’t you ashamed_ , but lets himself wrap a hand around Napoleon’s arm, giving him a reassuring squeeze.

Seven months since he nearly strangled him to death. Somehow the need for that isn’t so urgent now, not like how it was in the first few months of their partnership. That’s the worst part, actually, because Illya knows it’s annoyance, understands that there is only so much bullshit one can suffer from in a day, but once that crosses over to _endearing_ —even when Napoleon’s sticking his nose into every business but his own—Illya knows that there’s a problem.

It’s not that he’s unaware of his… sexual preferences. If anything, he’s come to terms with it, realises that if his mother could’ve put up with it in her work—she’d probably have accepted him for who he was, whatever he liked. His father’s say in anything was nullified, and the KGB didn’t really care as long as you carry out the assassinations, keep on serving Russia. They’d just pretend that everything was the same as usual, onwards with their merry ways.

The _problem_ is that Illya has to deal with the consequences of possibly endangering his missions. A partner is only useful if they had your back and you had your own, but now… it’s possible that he’s invested in keeping one of them alive.

\--

He likes the idea of U.N.C.L.E. more so than the KGB. A lot more, in fact, he loves the notion of Gaby and Waverly and Napoleon always hanging around at the edges, but not like this.

“I’m fine,” he repeats, and he doesn’t know just how many times he’s said that already, for the last couple of months, again and again and again.

Gaby seems to retreat a little, and Napoleon’s hanging somewhere by the liquor cabinet, eyes darting. He forces himself to continue. “Injuries are catching up to me,” he shrugs, hearing his accent thicken just by a fraction—it’s a tell that he’d have to mask up, sometime. 

“Your last mission was two weeks ago,” his once-fiance raises an eyebrow, all the while staring at him, "are you sure? We’re just checking, Illya, it’s just that you seem a bit stressed out, lately.”

He tries his hardest not to laugh. _If only if it was just stress._ “Really,” he moves away, waving away Napoleon’s presence at the cabinet to pour himself some scotch. “I’m not compromised.”

“That’s not what we’re worried about,” Gaby starts, but Illya turns around to give her a hard stare, more gently than he’d give, say, Napoleon, for instance—and she quiets.

They stare at each other for a long moment, and Gaby desists, leaving for her room without another word. He’ll apologise to her in the morning, Illya thinks, and lifts his drink—but Napoleon’s hand is encircling his wrist.

“Peril,” he murmurs, eyes bright even in the darkness, “don’t give me that crap. You’re not sleeping.”

He has half a mind to jerk his hand away from his grip—which had turned out tighter than he expected—but doesn’t.

“So what if I’m not,” he clenches his other fist, the hand Napoleon’s not holding. His lips are pressed together, tight, and Illya wonders if he’d always looked this way, the lines on his face deeper on his face than he’d expected, but he remembers.

 _You were in the war too,_ he wants to say, but doesn’t. _We’re still stuck in there. Maybe we’ll always be._

“You know you could tell me,” Napoleon says, after Illya has watched him for far too long, his drink barely-touched but his emotions already going haywire, “I’d at least listen. I can even help, who knows.”

 _Can you,_ Illya thinks, bitterly, even though he knows that this is probably someone he needs to talk to, someone who’s pulled him out of the water once, took a bullet for him thrice, saved his life too many times to count, _can you really?_

“I know,” he says, and tries not to stare too hard at him, the angles of his face, the cheekbones. It’s not that Illya has not realised this, but Napoleon really is shockingly good-looking, and the kind that won’t fade after multiple viewings: he’d know, they had practically lived in each other’s pockets for a few good months. But that information never comes to him like this, close to his face and simmering in the dark. He wants him, Illya finally registers, not the way Gaby wants a new car or how Napoleon steals his watch only to return it to him later. It’s reflex, like biting out a sarcastic comment in the wake of anything happening, just because.

Illya clears his throat. “What we do… can be difficult,” he forces out, if only to appease Napoleon, “I don’t forget that.”

Napoleon still has his hand on him, the pad of his thumb digging into Illya’s skin. It hurts, but Illya doesn’t mind, knows that the insecurity could fester. Torture is an easy word to say when you haven’t lived it over in your sleep. He’d know, Napoleon would know—the both of them have enough scars, from this war or the last, for a lifetime.

Napoleon blinks. He looks slightly confused, a bit hazy around the edges, but the amount of alcohol he’s consumed shouldn’t be able to make him feel even minutely tipsy. He’s looking up at Illya now, unbearably close. It’ll be a kiss if either of them leaned in. If.

“Me too, Peril,” he says, after a long moment, of both of them just watching each other. What they have isn’t playful all the time; they’ve divided their time learning about each other into increments, segments of work—but Illya isn’t sure where Solo, partner, Cowboy, infuriating asshole, and Napoleon, stupid, _beautiful_ man, collapse into one another and form into this complexity of a person, a smile stretching across his face, infinitely hopeful.

 _Don’t_ , he almost says. _It’s not worth it._

Napoleon’s the first to break the silence. “It doesn’t leave as easily as people think, does it,” he whispers, and his breath is warm on Illya’s neck, when he looks down. “Lingers in your head.”

“You aren’t wrong.”

 Napoleon tilts his head to the right, assessing. Illya forgets how observant he is, sometimes. “So, tell me.”

Illya takes a risk, and laces his fingers with Napoleon’s, lightly. He doesn’t pull away, after a few seconds, and Illya breathes. “What do you want to hear,” he asks, but there’s something like disappointment on Napoleon’s face again, breaking out smoothly.

Napoleon smiles. “Anything you have to say.”

\--

“It’d be easier,” Illya starts off, “if they weren’t all insane to begin with.”

Napoleon barks out a short laugh. “A lot less of these scars, that’s for sure.”

\--

For what it’s worth: it wasn’t that Illya had never tried breaking away.

Had even thought that it could be easy, that you could just put your foot down and say _no, I’m not doing this anymore, my father has nothing to do with me—_ but nothing’s ever as simple as it turns out to be. It’s not like he could’ve found any work after that; Russia doesn’t have many jobs to offer to begin with, not like there’s no possibility he won’t end up dead.

“What if anything happens,” Illya mutters, feeling a bit out of place with Napoleon, who’s on the couch nursing his hangover by burrowing his face into a pillow. Illya pokes him with a shoe, who subsequently groans and tries his hardest to pull away.

But then he sits up, and looks just about ready for interaction with another human again, and Illya’s eyes drift down his torso, exposed by the buttons of his shirt, still undone. They’re scarred, mostly, with a few fresh ones they’d gotten from two months ago. He remembers that, remembers more about Napoleon’s scars than his own, he reckons.

“Illya,” he says, the hard lines of his face smoothing out, “ _something_ is bound to happen. Whether you want it to or not.”

\--

What _does_ happen: is that he’d gotten his watch stolen. Again.

“You can’t really help it,” Napoleon shrugs, popping a grape into his mouth as Illya frantically walks around the room, “you kind of look like an easy target.”

Illya bristles. “Me. An easy target?”

He nods, “you’re well-dressed, you aren’t poor, you’ve been storming around the streets with the target…… but I see your point. Some perspective, is all.”

Illya doesn’t dignify that with a response. There’s carelessness and plain stupidity—and he’s not so sure if he can excuse himself from falling into the second category, this time. Because he was bound to lose it, for all the missions he’d gone on, bound to let the weight from his wrist fall into someone else’s hands. Even with the watch looking like what it is, battered and well-worn, someone will still want to take it from him. It’s gone and he doesn’t have an excuse.

“Peril,” Napoleon says, gently, his hands pressing down, wrapping around Illya’s fingers, “you’re shaking,” and he lets the anger wash over him, the familiarity of it. He’s got an urge to push Napoleon away but he doesn’t.

When his fingers have stopped trembling, he says, “I didn’t know what to expect.”

“From what?”

“This,” Illya gestures between them, his fingers tapping uncontrollably onto Napoleon’s arm. He doesn’t seem to mind. “How exhausting it is.”

He glances down to the pale expanse where his watch should be, and looks up, feeling the bitterness churn over on his tongue. Because these missions will always take something from him, either his life or his limbs or his watch, and register something else, pain, sadness, whichever, until they don’t. It’s a matter of stretching your luck, edging your way over the end because Russia had asked this of him and things have stayed the same in U.N.C.L.E..

And he doesn’t know if he can stand this, the waiting, or if he’s got something else coming up from him rather than this restless ticking that keeps him awake at night. He’d plunged a knife into people’s bodies, heard the squelch as it came back out, thought about it, turning it over in his hands.

He’d managed so far. He’d made it through, he thinks, and looks towards the man who’s holding his hands, quiet, wondering if those hands still remember the phantom pain from where the faded scars had come from, it bothers him.

“Then why are you doing it.”

“Because I have to—“ Illya cuts himself off, because he doesn’t know the words that would have followed. He’s been doing this for most of his life, this silly espionage, the knives in the dark and the gun in his jacket. They had told him it was the right thing to do and he did it, did what they’d asked and only had more orders in return, because it was on his head to rectify whatever his father did. But it shouldn’t have been. His father was consumed by greed and they’d assumed he would’ve been the same. They’d talked about shame and dishonour and disgrace like they could stop if he’d did what they asked him to, sent him out with the bruises still fresh and his wounds red.

And they won’t stop, not if they can help it. Won’t stop hanging this over his head because what leverage do they have now? He’s not even an ambassador anymore, he’s not representative of anything. The most they’ll do is fire the gun they’ve been following by his head but there’s nothing else.

Napoleon lets go, and Illya tamps down the disappointment that surges up in his chest, but he’s circling a palm around Illya’s neck now, slowly. Illya can see his eyelashes from this distance, the shadows, the lines around his eyes.

 _You’ve got demons, too,_ he wants to say but doesn’t. _We’re all trying to escape a sentence we can’t run away from._

“Think about it, Illya,” he whispers, softly, so unlike how he usually is—how he first was—but the both of them have changed and maybe change is a good thing, like Napoleon looking more than he talks at him, like flash of challenge in his eyes dulling down but never going away, like the both of them encircling each other but never touching, not like they are now.

“About what.”

“Letting go,” Napoleon says, leaning in, and Illya meets him halfway through.

\--

It’s August and they’re in New York. Napoleon’s flushed red from the heat, the balcony doors are open, and there’s no way to tell the time.

Illya picks up the telephone. Napoleon’s watching him, a hand propping up on one chin, and says, "I want a vacation," if only to see his face light up with laughter, his head tilting back.

 _Maybe it was worth it,_ he thinks,  _if only for him._

**Author's Note:**

> that's me, i'm alexandria huxley. (i know, i know, i know, it was simpler, okay?)  
> title taken from [here](http://arquiense.tumblr.com/post/121836099159/do-you-ever-wonder-if-raindrops-are-scared-of); summary from [here](http://arquiense.tumblr.com/post/97223315584/i-do-not-know-how-many-more-apologies-can-fall). 
> 
> i might not be able to write for a while. i have exams, literally had my first one today, screwed it up, will come back in three weeks.
> 
> [tmfu tumblr](http://illyaks.tumblr.com) / [poetry tumblr](http://arquiense.tumblr.com)


End file.
